A client in Perth once sent me a photo of a hairline crack above a doorway with the subject line “is my house sinking,” and honestly, that reaction is the norm rather than the exception. Nearly every house older than a decade has some cracking somewhere. The job isn’t deciding whether cracking exists — it’s telling normal settlement, which every structure goes through, apart from active movement, which keeps getting worse and eventually needs engineering intervention. Those two things get lumped together constantly, and the confusion costs buyers money in both directions: some walk from houses that are fine, others buy houses that need real work without knowing it.
Continue reading Foundation Movement Versus Normal Settlement